Wednesday, June 24, 2020


C. J. Box is the bestselling author of twenty-seven novels including the Joe Pickett series.  He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction.  He was awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum and the Spur Award from Western Writers of America for Best Contemporary Novel.  The novels have been translated into 30 languages and over ten million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad.  He’s an Executive Producer on ABC’s Big Sky which is based on his Cassie Dewell novels starting with The Highway.  http://www.cjbox.net/  Novelist Charles James (C.J.) Box Jr. is a Wyoming native and currently lives in the state.  He grew up in the town of Casper.  Box graduated with a degree in Mass Communications from the University of Denver.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Box

Polynesia is a sub-region in Oceania made up of than 1,000 islands spread across the southern and central Pacific Ocean.  The islands of Polynesia cover an area of approximately 800,000 square miles and form a triangle-like region.  The word “Polynesia” was first used in 1756 by Charles de Brosses, a French writer in reference to all the island groups in the Pacific.  However, a restriction on the use of the term was proposed by Jules Dumont in 1831 during a lecture in Paris to the Geographical Society.  The Polynesian Triangle can be described as an area in the Pacific Ocean with three groups of islands at its corners.  The three island groups located at the corners of the triangle are Hawai’i (also known as Sandwich Island), New Zealand, and Easter Island.  Apart from the three major island groups located at the corner of the triangle, the main islands within the triangle include Samoa, the Cook IslandsTongaTokelauTuvaluWallis and FutunaNiue, and French Polynesia.  https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-polynesian-triangle.html

The 1927 silent film Wings was lost for decades until a copy was discovered languishing in the Cinematheque Francaise film archive in Paris, France.  Trivia:  The only silent movie to win the Oscar for Best Picture (then called "Best Production"), until The Artist (2011) won that category in 2012. * Wings was the very first winner of the category of Best Picture, then called "Best Production," at the 1st Annual Academy Awards held at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, CA on May 16, 1929.  The ceremony lasted all of five minutes and was broadcast on local Los Angeles radio station KHJ 930 AM. * The only movie to win an Academy Award for Engineering Effects.  * This film marks the first time that actors were filmed flying in the air. * The climactic battle scene involved 3500 soldiers and dozens of planes and was shot in one take that lasted five minutes. * The entire score was written, composed, and recorded using a Wurlitzer Pipe Organ. * William A. Wellman looked at 35 actors before casting Gary Cooper.  Although only a tiny role, it set Cooper on the road to stardom. * When Wings was revived in 1981 at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City, Carmine Coppola conducted a full symphony orchestra with synchronized special effects.  * Buddy Rogers (Jack) is shown playing a trombone.  He actually did play the trombone in real life and would make a good living as leader of his own jazz band.  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018578/trivia

The American soprano Anne Bollinger (1919–1962) was born in Lewiston, Idaho, studying first with Rosie Miller and later Lotte Lehmann.  She came to prominence in March 1948 singing in Bach's St Matthew Passion in Boston under Serge Koussevitzky.  Making her Metropolitan Opera début as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro in January 1949, she sang with the Company for six seasons until 1953.  There her rôles included Tebaldo in Don Carlo, Siebel in Faust, one of the Zaubermädchen in Parsifal, Emma in Khovanshchina and Frasquita in Carmen.  In 1953 she joined the Hamburg State Opera for four years where her rôles included Pamina in Die Zauberflöte in 1955.  She then returned to the United States before her premature death at the age of 39.  https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/142898256/anne-nielsen

A group is working to save the former home of the Lewiston Civic Theatre from demolition.  The Anne Bollinger Performing Arts Center Task Force wants the 111-year-old sandstone church building to be referred to by its official name, which comes from opera singer and Lewiston native Anne Bollinger.  City officials condemned the building in 2016, when a large roof truss failed and compromised its structural integrity.  A leaky roof was the culprit, but the incident shed light on several other problems that would take millions of dollars to fix.  http://savethebollinger.com/about/  April 1, 2018:  Lewiston grants a one-year reprieve for the building.  October 1, 1018:  New roof installed.  June 2020:  closed due to coronavirus

THE IMPORTANCE OF SPACE  Space between letters helps us recognize words.  Space between lines helps us read sentences quickly.  Space around edges frames the text on a page.

The roots of bubble tea can be traced back to the 1940s.  After working as a mixologist in an izakaya in Taiwan under Japanese rule during WWII, in 1949 Chang Fan Shu opened a tea shop selling unique shou yao (hand-shaken) tea made with cocktail shakers.  The result was a rich and silky iced tea with fine air bubbles on top--dubbed foam tea in Taiwan.  Today, shou yao is an essential bubble tea element.  No shou yao, no bubble tea.  In 1986, Taiwanese artist and entrepreneur Tu Tsong He decided to kick start a new business venture by riding on the tea shop trend.  "I thought to myself 'why don't I add some fenyuan into my green tea.'  The white fenyuan looks almost translucent with a white center when brewed inside the golden green tea, much like my mother's pearl necklace.  "So I coined it 'zhen zhu lu cha' (pearl green tea)."  Tu then experimented by adding bigger, black tapioca balls to milk tea for a richer taste and a chewier texture, which became the classic bubble milk tea most fans know and love today.  Maggie Hiufu Wong  https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/taiwan-bubble-tea-origins/index.html

Ursula K. Le Guin left behind a legacy unparalleled in American letters when she passed away in January 2018 at the age of eighty-eight.  Named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress for her contributions to America’s cultural heritage—the author of more than sixty books of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, drama, criticism, and translation—she was one of only a select few writers (the others being Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth) to have their life’s work enshrined in the Library of America while still actively writing.  She joined the likes of Toni Morrison, John Ashbery, and Joan Didion in receiving the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation, and her work garnered countless awards:  the National Book Award, the PEN/ Malamud, six Nebulas, six Hugos, and twentyone Locus awards among them.  The Imaginative Reality of Ursula K. Le Guin by David Naimon  Virginia Quarterly Review  Summer 2018 

April 14, 2020  If it were not for the pandemic, the Red Sox would already be a few games into their regular season.  But with baseball on hold, one musician has found a way to bring part of Fenway home.  Josh Kantor is Fenway Park's organist, and as of three weeks ago, he is also the host of a show called "7th Inning Stretch."  With help from his wife, Mary Eaton, he performs live on Facebook every day at 3 p.m. from their home.  "We were missing baseball and we needed a little something." Kantor said.  "It's a time when we forget about our troubles and we invite people to do the same."  Abbey Niezgoda   https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/red-sox-organist-plays-from-home-to-bring-the-fenway-feel-to-a-world-without-live-baseball/2107783/  See also Music Is My Life:  Red Sox Organist Josh Kantor | Episode 13 | Podcast  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0TayBgqceE
1:03:46  and Fenway Park's Organist Gives Fans That Ballpark Sound At Home—And He Takes Requests by Laurel Wamsley at

The Shoot the Book adaption market—a staple at the Marché du Film since 2014 and a rising player on the global film scene—continues to evolve.  As the program—a joint initiative between publishing trade group SCELF (Société Civile des Editeurs de Langue Française) and the publicly funded Institut Français—continues to host curated pitch sessions at markets in Cannes, Shanghai and Los Angeles, it will also look to expand its B2B rendezvous component that was introduced last year.  On June 25, 2020 Shoot the Book will kick off this year’s edition with a morning pitch session—spotlighting 10 literary properties selected by an industry jury—and return in the afternoon for a three-hour meeting platform that will bring together publishers and producers and allow them to book direct discussions with one another.  Keeping those market forces in mind, Shoot the Book will host a conversation with Element Pictures’ Ed Guiney—the Dublin-based producer behind literary adaptations “Room,” BBC/Hulu’s limited series “Normal People” and its upcoming “Conversations With Friends”—to be broadcast on June 26.  Ben Croll  Find titles of the 10 literary properties chosen for adaptation potential at https://variety.com/2020/film/spotlight/cannes-shoot-the-book-2-1234643638/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2289  June 24, 2020

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